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blind quotes

  • If a man look sharply, and attentively, he shall see Fortune; for though she be blind, yet she is not invisible.

    - Francis,Viscount St Albans Bacon
      Essays, no.40,'Of Fortune'.

  • Headstones stagger under great draughts of time after heads pass out, and their world must reel speechless, blind in the end about its chilling star

    -John originally John Allyn Smith Berryman
      'Homage to Mistress Bradstreet', stanza 55.

  • Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened, and the ears of the deaf shall be unstopped. Then shall the lame man leap as an hart, and the tongue of the dumb sing: for in the wilderness shall waters break out, and streams in the desert. And the parched ground shall become a pool, and the thirsty land springs of water: in the habitation of dragons, where each lay, shall be grass with reeds and rushes.

    -Bible (Old Testament)
    Isaiah 35:5^7.

  • Jesus answered and said unto them,Go and shew John again those things which ye do hear and see:The blind receive their sight, and the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, and the deaf hear, the dead are raised up, and the poor have the gospel preached to them.

    -Bible (NewTestament)
    St Matthew11:4^5.

  • Let them alone: they be blind leaders of the blind. And if the blind lead the blind, both shall fall into the ditch.

    -Bible (NewTestament)
    St Matthew15:14.

  • Ye blind guides, which strain at a gnat, and swallow a camel.

    -Bible (NewTestament)
    St Matthew 23:24.

  • Whether he be a sinner or no, I know not: one thing I know, that, whereas I was blind, now I see.

    -Bible (NewTestament)
    St  John 9:25.

  • A mathematician is a blind man in a dark room looking for a black cat which isn't there.

    - Charles Robert Darwin
    Quoted in  John D Barrow Pie in the Sky, Counting, Thinking and Being (1992).

  • It hasnovision, noforesight, nosight at all.If itcanbe said to play the role of watchmaker in nature, it is the blind watchmaker. See Paley 635:16.

    - Richard Dawkins
      Of natural selection. The Blind Watchmaker, ch.1.

  • I don't know what it is about fecundity that so appals. I suppose it is the teeming evidence that birth and growth, which we value, are ubiquitous and blind, that life itself is so astonishingly cheap, that nature is as careless as it is bountiful, and that with extravagance goes a crushing waste that will one day include our own cheap lives.

    - Annie Dillard
      Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, ch.10.

  • Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind.

    - Albert Einstein
    Science, Philosophy and Religion:  A Symposium, ch.13.

  • When you've reached myage, and your friends are beginning to worry about you, blind dates are a way of life.

    -JuliusJ Epstein
      Pete'n Tillie.

  • In regione caecorum rex est luscus. In the country of the blind the one-eyed man is king.

    - Desiderius originally  Gerrit Gerritszoon Erasmus
    c.1500  Adages, bk.3, century 4, no.96.

  • We have a habit in writing articles published in scientific journals to make the work as finished as possible, to cover up all the tracks, to not worryabout the blind alleys or describe how you had the wrong idea first, and so on. So there isn't any place to publish, in a dignified manner, what you actually did in order to do the work.

    - Richard P(hillips) Feynman
      Nobel lecture.

  • His eyesight has always been weak, a sort of film over the eyes. A doctor advised him not to read, but he said, 'Then I should be ignorant', and he refused an operation because there was a thousandth chance he might go blind and so remain ignorant.

    - Lady Isabella Augusta ne  e Persse Gregory
      Of Sean O'Casey.  Journal entry, 8  Jun.

  •    The poet as well Builds his monument mockingly; For man will be blotted out, the blithe earth die, the brave sun Die blind, his heart blackening: Yet stones have stood for a thousand years, and pained thoughts found The honey peace in old poems.

    - (John) Robinson Jeffers
      Tamar and Other Poems,'To  the Stone-Cutters'.

  • If you wake at midnight, and hear a horse's feet, Don't go drawing back the blind, or looking inthestreet, Them that asks no questions isn't told a lie. Watch the wall, my darling, while the Gentlemen go by!

    - (Joseph) Rudyard Kipling
      Puck of Pook's Hill,'Smuggler's Song'.

  • Les passions peuvent me conduire; mais elles ne sauraient m'aveugler. Passions can lead me on, but never blind me.

    - Marie-Madeleine Pioche de LaVergne La Fayette
      La Princesse de Cle' v es.

  • Our eyes are sentinels unto our judgements And should give certain judgement what they see; But theyare rash sometimes and tell us wonders Of common things, which when our judgements find, They can then check the eyes and call them blind.

    -Thomas Middleton
      The Changeling (with William Rowley), act1, sc.1.

  • Of dire chimeras and enchanted isle And rifted rocks whose entrance leads to Hell,^ For such there be, but unbelief is blind.

    -John Milton
      Comus,  A Mask, l.515^17.

  • Literature†is lonely and waited for, brilliant and pure and frightened, a marriage of birds, a conversation of the blind.

    - Lorrie Moore
      In the NewYork Times,10  Jul.

  • You know,Foley,I have onlyone eyeI have a right to be blind sometimes† I really do not see the signal.

    - Horatio,Viscount Nelson Nelson
    Said to Captain Foley during the Battle of Copenhagen, 2  Apr. Nelson disregarded the order of his superior,  Admiral Hyde-Parker, to break off action and went on to win the engagement.

  • Amazing grace! How sweet the sound That saved a wretch like me! I once was lost, but now am found, Was blind, but now I see.

    -John Newton
      Olney Hymns,'Amazing Grace'.

  • We feared the heartlessness of human beings, all of whom are born blind, few of whom ever learn to see.

    - Georgia O'Keeffe
    The Famished Road, ch.1.

  • To burn a book is not to destroy it.One minute of darkness will not make us blind.

    - (Ahmed) Salman Rushdie
      Book review in theWeekend Guardian,14^15 Oct.

  • L'amour, heurtant son front aveugle a'   tous les obstacles de la civilisation. Love, knocking its blind forehead against all of civilization's obstacles.

    - Sir Sydney Samuelson
      Indiana, preface.

  • We'd gained our first objective hours before While dawn broke like a face with blinking eyes, Pallid, unshaved and thirsty, blind with smoke.

    - Siegfried Louvain Sassoon
      'Counter-Attack'.

  • Does it matter?losing your sight?† There's such splendid work for the blind; And people will always be kind As you sit on the terrace remembering And turning your face to the light.

    - Siegfried Louvain Sassoon
      'Does It Matter'.

  • Vitality in a woman is a blind fury of creation.

    - George Bernard Shaw
      JohnTanner to Octavius Robinson. Man and Superman, act1.

  • An old, mad, blind, despised, and dying king.

    - Percy Bysshe Shelley
      'England in1819' (published in1839).

  • You will see Coleridgehe who sits obscure In the exceeding lustre and the pure Intense irradiation of a mind, Which, through its own internal lighting blind, Flags wearily through darkness and despair A cloud-encircled meteor of the air, A hooded eagle among blinking owls You will see Huntone of those happy souls Which are the salt of the earth, and without whom This world would smell like what it isa tomb.

    - Percy Bysshe Shelley
      'Letter to Maria Gisborne' l.202^11.

  • It doth repent me: words are quick and vain: Grief for a while is blind, and so was mine. I wish no living thing to suffer pain.

    - Percy Bysshe Shelley
      Prometheus Unbound, act1, l.303^5.

  • He died, Who was the Sire of an immortal strain, Blind, old and lonely.

    - Percy Bysshe Shelley
    Adonais, stanza 4.

  • Still falls the Rain Dark as the world of man, black as our loss Blind as the nineteen hundred and forty nails Upon the cross.

    - Dame Edith Louisa Sitwell
      'The Raids,1940. Night and Dawn'.

  •    In youth, before I waxe'  d old, The blind boy,Venus' baby, For want of cunning made me bold, In bitter hive to grope for honey.

    - Edmund Spenser
      Amoretti,'Anacreontics', no.1.

  •   Yet is that glass so gay, that it can blind The wisest sight, to think gold that is brass.

    - Edmund Spenser
      Of the mirror of fashion. The Faerie Queen, bk.6, proem, stanza 5.

  • Not the schoolboy heat, The blind hysterics of the Celt.

    -Tennyson
      In Memoriam A.H.H., canto109, l.15^16.

  • Where blind and naked Ignorance Delivers brawling judgements, unashamed, On all things all day long.

    -Tennyson
      Idylls of the King,'Merlin andVivien', l.662^4.

  • I will be deafer than the blue-eyed cat, And thrice as blind as any noonday owl, To holy virgins in their ecstasies.

    -Tennyson
      Idylls of the King,'The Holy Grail', l.862^4.

  • If thou shouldst never see my face again, Pray for my soul. More things are wrought by prayer Than this world dreams of.Wherefore, let thy voice Rise like a fountain for me night and day. For what are men better than sheep or goats That nourish a blind life within the brain, If, knowing God, they lift not hands of prayer Both for themselves and those who call them friend? For so the whole round earth is every way Bound by gold chains about the feet of God.

    -Tennyson
      Idylls of the King,'The Passing of Arthur', l.414^23.

  • I'm one of the blind alleys off the main road of procreation.

    - Evelyn Arthur StJohn Waugh
      Decline and Fall, pt.1, ch.12.

  • In the country of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.

    - H(erbert) G(eorge) Wells
      'The Country of the Blind', collected in The Country of the Blind and Other Stories (1911).

  • 'Alf Todd,'said Ukridge, soaring to an impressive burst of imagery,'has about as much chance as a one-armed blind man in a dark room trying to shove a pound of melted butter into a wild cat's left ear with a red-hot needle.'

    -Plum
      Ukridge, ch.5.

Webster's New World Dictionary of Quotations Copyright © 2010 by Chambers Harrap Publishers Ltd. All rights reserved. Published by Wiley, Hoboken, NJ. Used by arrangement with John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

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